Re: Hard Science

Carl,

All this is important caution. We cannot think past the mind. At the same
time, we commit an error if we reduce the world to the mind. The external
world, including the social one, makes knowledge possible; it has an
objective basis. Interpretations are not necessarily ideological. It
depends on the character of the interpetations.

Andrew Austin
Knoxville, TN

On Wed, 7 Jun 2000, Carl H.A. Dassbach wrote:

>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Andrew Wayne Austin" <aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
>To: "Mick Drake" <M.Drake@uea.ac.uk>
>Cc: "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
>Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 5:41 AM
>Subject: Re: Hard Science
>
>
>> Mick,
>>
>> My post wasn't about the US criminal justice system. It was to illustrate
>> a point related to the on-going thread, namely the presentation of
>> ideology as science. It was a timely example.
>>
>> I suffer from no illusions about the United States' system of criminal
>> justice, although I feel good when people have their death sentences
>> overturned. How about you?
>>
>
>
>Yes, but isn't all "soft" science "ideological" and isn't hard science
>"ideological" at the fringes.  In other words, we know very little about 
>the
>actual physical or social world - the "thing in itself, " as Kant tell us,
>is and shall rmeain fundementally unknowable.  What we have, at best, are
>approximations of that part of the  "world" we are interested in at a
>particualr moment.  These approximations reflect and embody distinct
>"weltanschauungen" (or what some might call "ideology") and are, at best
>partial insights.  I think Mannheim does a decent jopb of discussing this,
>at least in the case of the social sciences, in Ideology and Utopia.
>
>Of course, one verification of our approximate knowledge is praxis but even
>in this case, outcomes are themselves subject to interpretation. An outcome
>which may verify "knoweldge" for one person or group may disprove it for
>another person or group.
>
>Carl Dassbach
>